OUR OPINION: Time to pull the plug on Pilgrim

Saturday

Jan 21, 2017 at 12:01 AMJan 27, 2017 at 10:02 AM

It is time to close Pilgrim nuke plant – now, not 2019.

The plant’s abysmal safety record and the decision of the plant’s owner, Entergy Corp., to abandon the nuclear power business combine to raise overwhelming doubt about the wisdom of keeping the nuclear power plant operating one day longer than is absolutely necessary. Entergy’s plan to refuel the Pilgrim plant this year makes no sense in this environment. Our position on the nuke plant in Plymouth does not mean we are turning our backs on nuclear power. While we wish for the day when safe, renewable energy sources will light our homes and power our factories, we may well find that nuclear plays some role in our future energy mix. It is time, however, to turn off the reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and begin what is likely to be a contentious, lengthy and expensive – most likely more than $1 billion – decommissioning of the plant.

The Pilgrim nuclear plant was built in 1972 by what was then Boston Edison. It is roughly six miles south of Plymouth Rock and downtown Plymouth at the edge of Cape Cod Bay. It can produce 6.8 million watts of electricity, enough to meet the needs of 600,000 homes. Energy deregulation in the 1990s produced a Wild West show in the energy business. Delivery of electric power to your home remained a business regulated by states. But if you owned power plants, you could charge distribution companies whatever you could get for the electricity you produced. Entergy Corp. bet big on nuclear and selling electricity wholesale. The company, based in New Orleans and generating revenues of more than $11 billion a year, owns 10 nuclear power plants in seven states.

And everything was fine for the owners of nuclear power plants until fracking and the production of extraordinary quantities of natural gas. Natural gas price plummeted and nuke power took a big hit. The price went down by more than 50 percent in the last decade while the costs of generating power at a nuclear plant went up. That’s why Entergy Corp. says it will stop producing power at the Pilgrim Station on May 31, 2019. That’s why it is going to shut down what will be its last two reactors, the Indian Point reactors on the Hudson River 30 miles north of New York City, by 2021.

Last year was not a good year at Pilgrim. Tagged by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission as one of the three most troublesome plants in the country, it experienced a series of failures in 2016 that further eroded confidence in safety at the plant. During a routine inspection on Dec. 1, NRC employees said they found nine violations – three reported by the company and six discovered during the inspection. Specifically, the NRC said Entergy did not “maintain equipment availability, challenge unusual conditions, use prudent decision-making.”

The real hit came from another NRC inspection conducted by a team of 20 inspectors over a period of three weeks in December. After the first week, one of the leaders on that team wrote an email that was accidently sent to a leader of Cape Downwinders, a citizens group that wants the Pilgrim plant closed.

That email said the plant staff appeared “overwhelmed by just trying to run the station” and that there was a “safety culture problem” at Pilgrim. Jackson’s preliminary findings included failure by the staff to properly fix broken equipment, a lack of required expertise among plant specialist, failure of some staff to understand their roles and responsibilities and a team of employees who appear to be struggling with keeping the plant running.

At the request of Gov. Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, the state’s congressionaL delegation and a score of state legislators and local officials, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would hold a meeting in Plymouth to hear the concerns about Pilgrim. No date has been set for the meeting.

Entergy announced last April that is would refuel the Pilgrim reactor this spring. The common industry practice is to replace one-third of a reactor’s nuclear fuel every two years, and that usually costs roughly $40 million. There may be a more compelling way for Entergy to spend $40 million.

Decommissioning Pilgrim could take as long as 70 years. A special fund to pay for that decommissioning is robust because Boston Edison put money into it. Entergy has not done that, saying there was enough money in the fund to satisfy regulatory requirements. But Entergy is going to have to pay some portion of the cost of making the plant and its environs safe for other uses. Shut the plant down now and save that $40 million.

While we understand that Entergy may have obligations to supply electricity to the regional power grid through May 2019, but there are solutions to that, even if the company has to spend money on it. It is time for the company and public officials, particularly the NRC, to shut Pilgrim down.

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